


paula isn't dead

by stellarfluid



Category: Alice Isn't Dead (Podcast), Zombies Run!
Genre: Alice Isn't Dead AU, Crossover, F/F, LITERALLY this works so well based on what i know as a new member of the fandom ok, its just a matter of whether or not i can finish it LOL im bad w chapter fics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-04 11:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18342650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellarfluid/pseuds/stellarfluid
Summary: "Paula. I want to start by saying that this is not a story. It's a road trip! Which... same difference. I don't know where this trip started, what counts as the first moment. But for lack of a better answer, I'll start with this."I love you, Paula. I love you more than I've ever loved anyone. So, screw you for that."Maxine Myer's wife, Paula, went missing. No one knew what happened to her or where she went; she just disappeared without a word. Eventually, she was proclaimed dead.But since then, strange things have been happening --- things leading Maxine to believe that they had been wrong. Maxine knows the truth.Paula isn't dead.(No prior knowledge of "Alice Isn't Dead" is needed in order to understand this fic, but it is seriously recommended due to the fact that "Alice Isn't Dead" is really, really good.)





	1. The Omelet

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Alice Isn't Dead (both the podcast and the novel)](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/469295) by Joseph Fink, preformed by Jasika Nicole, produced by Disparition. 



> HELLO im a new runner five who just finished s1m11 and fell in love w maxine and paula immedietly. 
> 
> im also very predictable and LOVE "alice isn't dead" by joseph fink and thought that these two fit that story really well so here we are!
> 
> ive listened to the podcast AND read the novel so for this fic im trying to merge factors from both things so it isnt just straight from one or the other. im also trying really hard to write it myself rather than just directly quoting the novel, so im taking quite a few artistic liberties and kinda modifying it into my own writing style a bit! there are going to be some phrases that are straight from the novel anyway, though, mainly because there's no other way i can think of to write it.
> 
> also i have most of the first chapter memorized because im using it as a prose piece for forensics thus have read it a good 20 times at least LOL.
> 
> OH! and if you HAVEN'T listened to "alice isnt' dead", i have a question from joseph fink! be sure to read the author's note at the end for the answer >:3
> 
> "Why did the chicken cross the road? It's not what you think."

A woman’s voice comes through a crackled truck radio.

“Paula,” the voice says. She stops, or maybe the radio cuts out. Either way, there is a moment of radio static, before she begins again. “Paula,” she begins. “I want to start by saying--- ah, shit!” She cuts herself off, then takes a deep breath and says, “Sorry. Somebody cut me off. Anyway.”

“I want to start by saying that this is  _ not  _ a story,” she says. “It’s a road trip!” She sounds like she’s trying to be excited about it, but the falsified excitement quickly fades out. "Which... same difference, I guess. In both the beginning is exciting, and the ending is satisfying, and we end up… somewhere else. Somewhere completely different from where we started.”

She sighs. “I don’t know where this trip this started,” she explains. “What counts as the first moment. But for lack of a better answer, I’ll start with this:

“I’ll start with the omelet.”

\----

Maxine Myers was at a gas station. Or--- not a gas station, a diner  _ inside  _ a gas station. The diner part of the gas station, she was in that. She was sitting in a booth and was trying to eat a turkey club but… the turkey club was  _ not  _ making that easy. 

Her difficult situation with what the menu called “The Chef’s Special Club” was made even harder by the man she saw eating an omelet, over in a booth next to hers. It wasn’t the omelet that was the problem, it was the way he was  _ eating  _ the omelet. He was  _ devouring  _ it, scooping up big of egg with long, grease-stained fingers and shoving them into his mouth, each bite was followed by a low grunt. 

And he was staring at her.

He chewed with his mouth open, and his teeth and food were both a dull yellow. His clothes were dirty ---  _ filthy  _ \--- dirtier than what Maxine thought a diner would allow someone to wear and still serve. Just the word ‘Thistle’ across his breast, and no logo. His fingernails were yellow too; not cigarette yellow or nail polish yellow, but a translucent yellow, just below the surface. 

And he was moving that omelete from plate to mouth like it had nothing to do with eating. It was almost like he was a machine whose function was to do that.

And he was  _ staring _ at her. Or maybe he was eyeing her.

No. He was staring.

Maxine tried to ignore him. She tried to look anywhere else. Out the window, at the table in front if her, at the wall straight ahead or the dim fluorescent lights above her but… the man's grunts were so consistent that she  _ couldn't.  _

Then --- to her horror --- he got up, omelet dangling from his lips, and limped toward her like his legs had no muscle. Like they were just sacks of meat attached to his torso. He plopped himself down at the table across for her, and lipped the omelet from his lips with long, wet passes of his pale tongue. 

People say that bad experiences are like nightmares. This was not a nightmare. What Maxine would remember most about this experience was how real it was. Even in that moment she realized how _real_ it was --- how she could never escape that reality. How she would never be able to convince herself she remembered any part of that evening incorrectly.

\----

“It's the engine, Paula,” she is saying. “The sound of it. The noise of a truck this size, this height.” She groans. “It's the height,” she decides. “None of us are used to being this height anymore.”

“Once upon a time,” she says, “we rode horses. I mean--- oh, you know what I mean. I've never even seen a horse up close.” She sighs. “I'm probably not making any sense. But then again, we've always been able to understand each other. Or, at least, I thought so.”

She pauses.

“It's the height,” she repeats. “I guess I'll have to get used to it.”

She goes silent for another moment. Then she starts up again, this time with a different tone to her voice.

“There's this tower in the distance,” she says, intrigued, “coming out of the hillside. It looks like it’s part of a factory, but it’s just… coming out of the earth. It's creepy.” She audibly shudders. “Gut creepy,” she says, “like something gone terribly wrong. Like a terrible crime.” She pauses, contemplates. “It looks like something out of a myth. But I guess that's where myths come from, right? When something from the real world looks like something from a myth.”

She pauses again. “Who am I at this point of my life to question reality?” she asks, pensive.

She then goes back to her previous thought. “It  _ really _ doesn't real, though. It's so weird.”

She goes quiet for a while, then sighs again.

“I can't stop thinking about what’s  _ behind  _ me,” she says, distressed. “Not what they've got me carrying in the back of the truck,” she explains. “I think that's travel-sized deodorant. I don't know why anyone would  _ need  _ travel-sized deodorant, anyway. Most deodorant can go on a plane, you don't need, like,  _ smaller  _ versions. Even full-sized deodorant is pretty small. But, I guess, whatever a human being can put a price on needs to exist, so here we are. My cargo and I. Going from a place where it didn't need to be made to a place where it won't need to be used.”

“I'm not getting distracted,” she says. “I know what you're thinking, Paula. This is _intentional_ avoidance. I don't have to explain myself to you.” She takes another brief pause as if to smile. “But I will,” she says.

She starts to say something else, then stammers. “I--” she says, “I just… I just passed an exit sign that said ‘Anaconda Opportunity’. That's, ah, that's a fine invitation but I think,” she laughs, “I think I'm gonna pass.” She snorts. “‘Anaconda Opportunity,’” she repeats. “No thank you!”

“Anyway,” she says. “An explanation.” She laughs again. “Right.”

\----

Maxine's heart was pounding, like it often did when she felt trapped, which, even though she would never admit it, she often did. As much as she hated to say it, her life was a minefield of possible triggers for anxiety, even in the best of times. This was not the best of times.

“It's a fine evening,” the man said. “Doesn't look much like rain.”

She didn't answer. She thought that maybe,  _ just maybe, _ if she ignored him he would go away, but… that only works if you're not already in it to bother someone --- if you haven't already made up your mind to he awful.

“I hope you don’t mind if I join you,” he said. Not a question or a request, but a  _ joke. _

“Actually,” Maxine replied, “I was hoping to eat alone.”

“Good people deserve good things,” the man said. Maxine didn’t know what to say to that. 

“It’s dangerous out here,” he said.

“Out here?” Maxine couldn’t help but ask. “Out where? This area? Or are you talking about life in general?” She paused to fix him a look. “Are you here to explain death to me?”

He  _ laughed,  _ and his jaw sank crookedly into his neck _.  _ “Yes,” he said. “I’m here to explain death to you.”

He leaned in close, and his breath smelled rotten. Not  _ bad,  _ necessarily, but like fruit turning into soil. “Wanna see something funny?” he asked.

He got up, wiping the egg from his hands onto the word ‘Thistle’ on his shirt. His face was slack, and not arranged quite right. Like... human, but slightly off. He walked over to a table where a man sat --- a truck driver, probably. He looked like a truck driver.

What does a truck driver even look like, Maxine wondered?

“Hey, Earl,” the Thistle Man said.

“Huh?” Earl said, looking up. He seemed just as unhappy as Maxine had been to be disturbed, but then, the Thistle Man grabbed him by the back of the neck, and Earl’s face went vacant. The Thistle Man guided Earl out of his seat, like a parent shepherding a sleepy child. Earl’s eyes were empty pools of water. 

The Thistle Man took Earl out of the diner. Neither of them paid their checks. No one did anything. No one made a move to help. No one even  _ looked. _

Maxine didn’t know what to do. She began to follow them when one of the waitresses asked, “Hey, are you going to pay for that?” 

Oh right, the turkey club.  “I… yeah,” Maxine said, absentmindedly pulling out her wallet and giving the waitress some cash, not taking her eyes off the door that Earl and the Thistle Man had just left out of. She did not wait for her change.

But it was---

\----

“There times I hate you more than any of them, Paula,” she says. 

\----

Maxine went outside into a night unusually hot for early midwestern spring. The man in the Thistle shirt was waiting for her in the parking lot. 

It was what he did next.

\----

“First, there are mountains,” she says, “then these canyons winding around each other. I haven’t seen another house in hours.” She takes a deep breath, sounding more at peace than she had been.

“It’s getting dark now,” she says. “It’s getting late. The clock says the same thing it did when I started this morning, but it’s the other half of the day.”

“The sky is beautiful,” she says, then pauses to think. “I feel like we, as, like, a species, talk a lot about the night sky. I feel like the topic comes up a lot. Or, at least, more often then, like, the social construct of bees, or something. Which is  _ funny,  _ because the social structure of bees is  _ something,  _ while most of the sky isn’t really anything at all. It’s just… empty. And, like all emptiness, is a mirror.”

She laughs. “Or, don’t listen to me,” she says. “I’m just some lady driving deodorant across the country. I’m just saying this because… well. If you could see what I see, you would understand. It really is beautiful. The dark sky is something striking against the dark silhouette of the trees.” Another sigh. “So much of what I’ve seen is beautiful. More than you would think. Even some of the most terrible things have been beautiful.”

“And isn’t it interesting how the trees blot out the sky?” she askes. “They’re physical things casting shadows across nothingness.”

She exhales again. “We are nothing if not absurd,” she says.

“We are nothing.”

\----

The Thistle Man was waiting for her in the parking lot, and he was cradling Earl. Earl seemed fully awake again, but the Thistle Man’s arms clung like ropes around him, and he couldn’t move.

The lights on one half of the gas station were out, and the two shadowy figures were silhouetted against the bright diner windows. People ate waffles and sausages on the other side of them, unaware or uncaring about what was happening outside.

Earl tried to scream, but the scream was lost in the baggy flesh of his captor. There was something  _ off _ loose-skinned man: almost human, but not. He almost seemed like a boogeyman from some vaguely recalled nightmare. The Thistle Man.

Then, the Thistle Man bent down and  _ took a bite  _ out of Earl, at the artery in his left armpit. Earl made a sound like a balloon letting out air as blood poured down his torso. He was crying, but he still couldn’t move. 

Then, the man stuck his long, grease-stained fingers into the wound and tore off bits of Earl’s flesh, lifting them to his mouth. He was eating bits of Earl the same mechanical way he had eaten the omelet.

This was not a meal. This was not something he needed to do in order to survive. This was a demonstration. He wanted Maxine to know and, Jesus, right then, she  _ knew.  _

Maxine only had a moment to decide how to respond and didn’t need even that. She ran, of course, ran to her truck with her breath and heartbeat deafening in her ears. She locked the doors, of course. She pulled out of the parking lot as fast as a truck that size can go, which isn’t fast enough in a situation like that, _of course._

Behind her in the mirror, she saw the two figures. She saw Earl looking at her; a man who had expected to go to sleep tonight, who had an idea of what the next few days would hold for him and some sort of plan for the future.

Who was, instead, watching the one person who could help him driving herself away to safety, leaving him with only a monster to accompany him in his dispassion. 

“Of course I cried, Paula,” she says. “Of course I did.”

Some moments can’t be changed.

\----

“The land here is flat and grassy,” she says. “It’s dark now. The darkness here really has  _ depth  _ to it, you know? It keeps going.”

“I didn’t know darkness could have a bottom,” she states, “until I saw a dark that didn’t.”

\----

“I’ve seen the Thistle Man again since,” she says. “I’ve seen him again and again behind the bathrooms at rest stops, in the snack aisle in gas stations, in the biggest booths in the smallest roadside bars with one type of beer on the menu and video poker in the bathrooms. There’s something weird and brutal about his movements, like he doesn’t know how any of him works. And sharp teeth. Not like fangs, not sharp enough, but they don’t look like human teeth either.”

“And yellow fingernails,” she says. “Not nail polish yellow, but translucent yellow, just below the surface. He hasn’t talked to me again, but I’ve been seeing him, and he knows. He wants me to know that he’s following me.”

“I don’t know who this… I won’t say ‘man’; he is  _ not  _ a man. I don’t know what he is.” She sounds a bit panicked now. “Do you know, Paula? Is that why you left? Or is it something else?”

“Was it me?”

\----

“So, here we are,” she says, “between two roads I’ve never heard of before, with a truck full of travel-sized deodorant and an unusual height. I’m closer to the night sky than I am any other human. The night sky is beautiful, and almost seems heartbreaking but… it’s not. It’s not anything. It’s just not.”

She falls silent.

“Where  _ are  _ you, Paula?” she asks, and she sounds so, so sad. “Why can’t I find you?”

She pauses again, then begins with a new resolve. "I'll keep driving this truck," she says, "I'll keep wandering this country. I'm going to find you. I  _will._ " But the resolves falls away as she says, "Hopefully I'll find you before the Thistle Man finds me."

She starts to say something again, but her voice dies away. When she beings another time, her voice is soft, afraid. "Every time I look behind me," she says, "I'm afraid every set of headlights I see are him, and his weird, dirty hands are on the steering wheel and they're pointing at me and he'll start going faster and---" she cuts herself off. She takes a breath. She continues, "And every night I swear --- I  _swear_ I hear, like, the scratching of fingernails. It's so quiet that it could easily be mistaken for silence but I'm  _so sure_ that it's him, waiting for me to get curious of scared enough to investigate."

She huffs.

"This better be worth it, Paula," she says, and her voice shakes.

"Nothing ever could be."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maxine talks about Paula, and drives through a town called Charlatan. 
> 
> There's good freedom and bad freedom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY no one's reading this but im gonna keep updating it anyway. if anyway does end up reading it though, hi, thanks! please leave feedback!!
> 
> and read the notes at the end for an answer to the question "why did the chicken cross the road?"

Today, the first thing you hear from her is her singing. She sings along to Wheezer’s “Say It Ain’t So”, sounding more at ease than normal, like she’s actually having fun for once.

\----

“I thought you were dead, Paula,” she says. “I really, really did. I mean, there was no evidence for it, but there wasn’t--- I couldn’t think--- I really couldn’t---” she stops, starts over. “I couldn’t think of any reason you would just disappear like that. Just _gone._ You weren’t there next to me in the mornings or coughing before bed. No halo of warmth in the air around you, just empty air.”

She sighed. “I loved you, Paula,” she said. “I loved you so, so much. I loved you more than I ever loved anybody.” A shaky breath. “So, screw you for that.”

\----

“Once you go north from the Salt Lakes, the landscape really starts winding down,” she explains. “It’s all majestic mountains before that, but then it just gets flat. I don’t think the landscape here is _bad,_ but anything’s a let down from the mountains.”

\----

Maxine was sitting at a stoplight in a small town. A sign said the town was called “Charlatan”, and she wondered who decided that that was a good name for a town.

The thought the town was nice enough, though. There was a cute breakfast/lunch restaurant called The Fairenfield, a gas station with no name with a white pickup truck and the pump and a teenage girl pumping gas into it. There as a little neighborhood beyond that with tract houses and well-kept yards. The yards made Maxine smile --- it reminded her how _badly_ she had maintained her own yard before all this. A woman and her son left a place called Trade Winds Tiki Hotel. It looked like the mother was scolding her child, but in a loving way. An elderly man in flannel was crossing the street, and he stared at Maxine, but not in a bad way.

Maxine guessed the world never came through this town very often. She guessed the world hadn’t been there in a long time.

\----

“I went to groups,” she says. “I sat in circles and talked about you. That’s what we do, right? As a civilization, I mean. We sit in a circle and describe the shape of the monster that is devouring us. We hope that, somehow, describing it will protect us against it. It won’t though. We’re helpless.”

A pause. A sigh. “I’m sorry,” she says. “The late night driving is getting to me. I’ve been at this for nine hours, and… today was strange. So there’s that.”

“The circle was fine,” she admits. “It--- It was good, actually. I talked about you, and how there was always something about you, and how I knew you kept secrets because you had to, but  I never--- Paula, I _never_ thought… I never--- I never. So, instead, I just thought you were dead. I thought that there was no other explanation, but then… there you were. I saw you, on the news. There was a murder in some town I had never heard of --- a town that no one knew about except for the people who lived there. A brutal murder. Bystanders were gawking, trying so hard to explain the monster they just saw, trying to get a handle on it, and then--- and then I--- you were _there._ Right among them, acting like it wasn’t a surprise to you, like you knew exactly what was going on.”

“Nothing was _ever_ a surprise to you, was it?” she asks. “You knew everything.

\----

Maxine had been on the highway for a couple of hours, and knew she was far away from where she had been earlier in the day. But there was something weird going on.

As crazy as it may seem, she was in Charlatan again. Sitting at that same red light. Fairenfield, gas station, neighborhood, Trade Winds Tiki Motel, but… something was different this time.

Everything was where it was before. The white truck was at the gas station, but it was covered in dirt --- _everything_ is covered in dirt. The windows of the restaurant were blacked out with mud, and the yards in the neighborhood were flooded with a swampy muck.

The teenage girl was still with her truck, but she was turned away from Maxine with her face pressed against the side of her vehicle. The woman and her son had their heads pressed to the outside of a motel room door. The elderly man was at the corner, but he wasn’t crossing --- instead he had his head pressed up against the pole of the streetlight. No one was moving.

Maxine didn’t like it. She wanted to get out. She wanted the light to change. She wanted---

Oh! -- it changed. Okay, she was going now. She was going as fast as she could, pressing as hard on the pedal as she could. There was a deep black mud splashing against her tires, running into the street.

\----

“You know I don’t really watch the news much,” she says. “I would watch it sometimes to learn about new breakthroughs in science and medicine that might have happened recently but… that was it, you know? But after I saw you, I tried not to miss a single minute of it. I watched multiple channels of 24-hour news; so much that it devoured me. And I began to see. I saw fires, floods, landslides… earnest folks speaking earnestly, only describing the bad parts of the world.”

“And in the background,” she says solemnly, “you. Sometimes just for a moment, sometimes long and staring. Over, and over, and over again, you. I began making a list of all the places I saw you, and eventually that list became a map of the country.”

She chuckles dryly. “So, my wife wasn’t dead. That’s good to know. That’s new information.”

“I stopped going to the groups,” she says. “I stopped sitting in circles. I started going, began moving, trying to understand, trying to--- trying to get a grasp on the, oh, you know, the--- the…” A sigh. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess I’m still sitting in a circle, just telling this story over and over again and hoping that you will hear, will understand. Hoping that I can ward off my monster by describing the shape of it.”

She laughs a bit, with slightly more humor than before. “I quit that job, by the way,” she says. “You would have been so proud of me! I stormed into that office and told Meryl that I was _done_ with her exploiting me as a member of her medical staff. She didn’t say much in return. It’s all so clean now. So… expected. Every relationship, no matter how long, no matter the history, is destined to end. Separation is inevitable, and is never a surprise.”

“I started to look through you things,” she says, honestly. “I felt bad doing it, because I knew that a lot of your work was confidential, and how you always said that breaching secrets would get you fired --- and all the other stuff were memories, you know? I didn’t wanna tangle with the memories just yet. But… now they weren’t just memories and secrets. They were evidence. And I just… I had to know, you know? I think I deserve to know.”

A moment of silence.

“The landscape is changing here,” she says, changing the subject, done talking about her monster for a moment. “I’ve driven farther up North.” Pause. “Oh,” she says, excitement bleeding into her voice, “I see trees! Trees, thank God!”

“There are different types of desert,” she says. “There is desert that is something – it’s mesas or it’s sand, it has its own spatial language – and then there’s desert that just…isn’t. Flatlands is the absence of everything else. I suppose that this, too, has its own spatial language, but… wow. I am so happy to see trees again.”

\----

Was the world _really_ doing this to her? _REALLY?_

Maxine was in Charlatan, again. The same stoplight, again. The same buildings, the same people, _again._

She was supposed to be hours and miles away from Charlatan. She knew for a fact that she wasn’t going around in circles --- all of the other towns she had passed have been on the map in the direction she was supposed to be going.

Charlatan was not on the map.

To make things worse, the town was on fire. _Everything_ was on fire. The gas station, the Trade Winds Tiki Motel, the restaurant. But despite all the flames, Maxine didn’t feel any heat.

There was something burning at the gas station. She thought it was a person. She really didn’t want to think about _who_ the person was, she knew it was probably the---

Oh, oh God. The elderly man, he was crossing the street, and he was on fire. He was on _fire!_ He turned and looked at Maxine, and his face was hollow and burning, and she could see where his skin had been burnt away, and---

And then he opened his mouth, as if to scream, and she could see the fire inside him. Even his _insides_ were burning!

She ended up running the light. She had to drive away. She didn’t know what to do! She had no idea what to do!

She could do nothing but drive.

\----

“Again and again,” she says. “On your laptop and scraps of paper, on letters that you had hidden under your clothes, there were phrases I didn’t understand. ‘The Cumberland Project’. ‘Vector H.’ And, more than any other, ‘Bay & Creek Shipping’. Over and over again, you had written about Bay & Creek Shipping. And why, Paula? Why did this particular truck company interest you so much? What was there for me to find?”

“So I took a job,” she says. “Bay & Creek Shipping. They go anywhere good businesses need transportation services. I had to go to school to learn how to drive these things --- it’s not that hard once you get the hang of it. I guessed there are a lot of people who do it, so I couldn’t be that hard, right?”

“This job takes me all over,” she explains, “which is where you are. All over. I am a loyal employee of Bay & Creek Shipping, moving what is in one place to another, every mile a few cents.”

“I thought you were _dead,_ Paula.” She sighs. “Maybe you are. Maybe I’m chasing a ghost. Chasing a ghost in a truck that says Bay & Creek Shipping --- your friend in transportation.”

“I’ve driven over quite a few creeks,” she says, “but not many bays. Mostly land. Mostly a lot of land.”

\----

Charlatan.

_Again._

Everything was back the way Maxine had seen it before. Fairenfield, the gas station, the neighborhood, Trade Winds Tiki Motel; exactly where it had been and how it had been the first time she had driven through Charlatan. No dirt, no mud, no fire.

The teenage girl was filling up her white truck at the gas station, but she was crying. She looked at Maxine, and she was crying.

 _Everyone_ was crying. The mother and son leaving the motel --- both of them were crying. Maxine knew that behind the windows of every single home in that little town, people were looking at her and crying.

But the elderly man was not at his corner, he was not crossing. For a moment, she couldn’t find him, but then---

 _He was in the truck._ He was there, in the passenger seat, next to Maxine. She was so scared, she was too afraid to move. He was crying, too, crying _so much_ , his face was eroded with tears, it looked like he had spent years weeping, and he wasn’t saying anything. Nothing.

“What do you want?” Maxine asked, her voice trembling, her body shaking as she gripped the steering wheel as tight as she could, knuckles going white. The man stayed silent, but he lifted a hand and pointed to the road leading out of town. He nodded.

Maxine ran the light again, lifting her foot off the break. She was leaving Charlatan. She wanted to leave Charlatan, and, it seemed, Charlatan wanted her to leave, too.

The man was gone. She could see him behind her crossing the crosswalk.

She knew that this meant something, but she knew she wasn’t meant to know. It’s meaning didn’t involve her.

She was leaving Charlatan.

\----

“There are a lot of different types of freedom,,” she says. “We talk about freedom like we talk about art. We act like just saying it is a statement of quality rather than a description. Calling something ‘art’ doesn't mean it’s good --- art could be good or bad.”

“Freedom can be good or bad, too,” she explains. “There can be terrible freedom. You freed me, and I didn't ask you to. I didn't _want_ you to. I'm more free now than I ever had been, and I'm spiraling.  I am spiraling across the country. Maybe you are, too. Well, I want our lines to cross. At least one more time.”

She breathes. “I’m in Eastern Washington,” she says. “The landscape is completely different. No more miles and miles of flatland. I’m out of the loop.” A pause. “I don’t think I'm going to see Charlatan again. I think I'm free of it. _That_ is good freedom.”

Yet another pause. “You owe me an explanation, Paula,” she says. “I am going to see that you make good on that. I deserve to know, and I deserve to hear it from you directly. You may think you're free, Paula, but you're not.”

“You’re not free from me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Why did the chicken cross the road? Because on one side was everything she had ever known, and on the other side was a future, maybe. And even though she was afraid to leave everything she had ever known, she also wanted a future, maybe. And so, hesitating, and then not, and then moving quickly, running, sprinting even, desperate, she crossed and found a future. Maybe. And left behind everything she had ever known. And that is why the chicken crossed the road." --- joseph fink
> 
> see you later! stay safe out there! ;D
> 
> EDIT: ok so idk why the note for chap. 1 is on here too but i don't have time to figure that out until l8r LOL it shouldnt be there though

**Author's Note:**

> "Why did the chicken cross the road? Because the dead return. Because light reverses. Because the sky is a gap. Because it’s a shout. Because light reverses. Because the dead return. Because footsteps on the ceiling. Because footsteps in the basement. Because the sky is a shout. Because it’s a gap. Because the grass doesn’t grow, or grows too much, or grows wrong. Because the dead return. Because the dead return. That – THAT – is why the chicken crosses the road." --- Joseph Fink
> 
> anyway that's it for this chapter! hopefully i'll find it in me to continue and this hyperfix won't die out before i'm done. 
> 
> and in case your wondering, it is supposed to skip around like that, and some bits aren't supposed to seem like full thoughts! that's the point, lol.
> 
> thank you for reading! please leave feedback --- i'd love to know what you all think.
> 
> stay safe out there!


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